Urban mobility, delivery services, and payments in 2022
The urban mobility sector is blossoming across the world, from London and New York to Shanghai and Sydney. Businesses including e-scooter rental and on-demand grocery delivery services are gaining traction — particularly amongst younger consumers — and competition for their custom is fierce.
Pricing, delivery speed and easy-to-use apps all contribute to acquiring and retaining customers, but as competition intensifies, margins are inevitably squeezed.
Thankfully, innovation in the equally competitive fintech sector can bring opportunities to urban mobility operators in the form of payment methods that are low in cost and high in convenience.
Citizen is the only payments company in the UK & EU that has tailored its platform to the needs of urban mobility and on-demand delivery services. Using the opportunities facilitated by Open Banking, we’ve developed a payments platform — PayBlox — that delivers both low transaction costs and a great payment experience, ideally suited to B2C companies with high volumes of transactions.
Reducing operational costs, saving time and removing friction
Getting customer journeys right is critical — and ‘right’ means quick, intuitive and attractive. The new generation of Open Banking-based payment methods has the potential to offer payment journeys of unprecedented simplicity.
Citizen delivers on this by providing you with thoroughly user-tested, customer ready payment flows that are designed to convert. They can be integrated seamlessly into apps and adapt fluidly to both web and mobile environments. This limits drop-off while keeping the customer experience as simple as possible.
Keeping more of every payment
Margins matter when competition is as intense as it is in today’s urban mobility market. Citizen’s payment method allows customers to pay without the need for their cards — connecting directly to their bank on their mobile app to make a bank-based payment, but without the hassle of having to type in the business’s bank details.
Not only is this super-easy from the consumer’s perspective, but charges to the business are less than those for credit or debit card processing.
Instant settlement & confirmation of payment
In addition, issues regarding payments also arise during the order-to-delivery journey. Sometimes payments are not confirmed even though they have been conducted. This just leaves a confused management team and a frustrated customer. Even when the issue has been detected and identified, payments and chargebacks can take a long time to reach the account.
Instant payments and instant confirmation are crucial variables of successful and accurate money management, and there is no reason for urban mobility operators to be expecting any less from their banking and payment providers.
Citizen PayBlox: one powerful platform for payments
PayBlox is a modular fintech platform that gives you the technology for secure, instant payments and a better customer experience. PayBlox is easily and quickly integrated with your business — and your existing bank — and we provide you with fully tested end-to-end UX optimisation to ensure you have a payment experience worthy of your brand.
You can add Citizen as a payment option at checkout alongside your existing providers. We work with many brands, large and small, across the UK and Europe, and would love you to try it in your business.
Try it yourself here and for a full demo or to talk to us about the options, contact us here.
